Lines

Just to let you know, Cason is scheduled to get his new central line on Thursday, so please pray that everything goes well. He really needs it because he is starting to throw up a bunch again, which is caused by the fact that he is pretty dehydrated. We just pray that it will stay infection-free. Tricia talked to Dr. Jernigan today and everything is definitely in the works for transplant...

Jackson is doing well with his PICC line and may actually get it out before the end of the week. It all depends on blood work that he had done today, so we'll see. We are going to Chattanooga with my family for the weekend, so it would be nice to be minus one protruding tube.

Hope you're all well. Talk to you soon.

Home!

Jackson and Tricia made it home this afternoon, so everybody's here! You just can't even imagine how good it feels to pull into our own driveway and sleep in our own beds. Maybe we'll be here for a while. We will give Jackson his IV antibiotics three times a day for 10 days and hopefully we can finally put all of this behind us.

Here are a couple of videos of the boys playing and really having fun tonight. Enjoy! Thanks so much for everybody's prayers over the past few days.

A PICC Finally

Here's an update on all that's going on.

After just kind of waiting around since Monday, Jacskon finally got his PICC line today. He was really sick for a couple of days with his fever getting up to 105.3 at one point. It was strange, though, because he would be playing and running around like normal and then out of nowhere he would just start shaking and get really lethargic and pale. As it turns out he has had a tonsil infection that no one caught until yesterday so that was probably the source of the strange symptoms. He seems to be feeling quite a bit better so hopefully he is on his way to getting better. It sounds like he may come home tomorrow. We've learned not to get our hopes up too early, though...

Cason was feeling left out so he decided to get in the action, too. He has started throwing up a bunch again, so our doctors wanted to check him out. He had an upper GI study yesterday at Scottish Rite to make sure that there were no blockages or other issues. Everything looked fine with his plumbing, so it looks like the throwing up is coming from dehydration. We met with Dr. Jernigan (kidney doc) and she wants to put another central line in, which will help with this. We have enjoyed being without the extra line, but it's not that big of a deal. Dr. J wanted to really speed up the transplant process, too, so hopefully a new central line will help things. Otherwise he has been feeling great, so we are very thankful. He is crawling and crusing like a champ and his personality is really coming out.

We are so blessed to have two amazing little boys. We are just ready for them to be healthy!

We'll keep you posted.

PICC

Jackson is going to have surgery to put in a PICC line today. For those of you who don't know a PICC is basically an IV that will be in his arm (hopefully) that he will come home with for a few weeks so that we can administer heavier doses of antibiotics.
Please pray that the procedure goes well without complications and that this will do the trick as far as the infections go. Thanks!

Can you hear me now?

With the promise of never ending excitement, here we go again. As most of you know Jackson has had a fit with ear infections. He has been on every antibiotic known to man and he had a PICC line last year to pump him full of meds to kill off the infection. For some reason we have not been able to stay infection free.
He had his tubes removed on Thursday and since that time the drainage has gotten much worse in both ears. It is really nasty. Well, since yesterday he has started having trouble hearing. As you can imagine this is very distressing. We tried all sorts of homemade hearing tests today like hiding behind the couch while asking him questions and whispering to him.
Our pediatrician and friend Dr. Mark Coker met us at his office and took a culture this afternoon. He and the ENT doctor that is on call feel like the hearing issues are due to all of the drainage, so please pray that this is the case. We are sick over this and are so ready for a break from all of the medical issues. He has an appointment with our regular ENT doc in the morning and he'll decide on a plan. It looks like he'll probably get another PICC line.
We went to church this morning and the message was great for us. We really enjoyed being back in Sunday School and being with our friends, too. After we left it has been pretty much downhill from there. We aren't having the best day as far as positivity and optimism go, so please pray for us. Thanks.

First Blog!

Well we decided that we would join the modern age and start a blog. We are going to try to be consistent with it and post with some regularity. We want to show everybody that we do have lives outside of all of our medical drama...
We are just getting home from a great night with Jeff & Gina. We haven't hung out in forever, so we decided to go bowling and out to eat. We wore it out at the Magnolia lanes and then ate mexican, so it was a lot of fun. Thanks to the Matsons for keeping the boys for us.
Jackson had his tubes removed on Thursday, but he is still having lots of drainage from his ears so we are kind of baffled on what to do it this point. It has been so frustrating trying to clear up these infections!!
Cason is doing really well overall. We go to Dr. Jernigan, his Nephrologist, on Tuesday so hopefully we'll know something more about transplant. We'll let you know...